


The Life and Times of DI Lestrade

by Eva



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-25
Updated: 2011-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-21 18:25:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eva/pseuds/Eva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>DI Geraldine Lestrade, that is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Life and Times of DI Lestrade

*********

“DI Gregson says you’re to deal with him, ma’am,” Sally says, half-amused and half-apologetic. Geri shakes her head but doesn’t complain; Toby’s good about favours. Well, more accurately he’s strict about them, and Geri’s learned to be careful about staying in the owed column.

“Good afternoon, Mister...?” she lets it trail off, looking at the sulky young man--oh, what her mother would have done about his posture!--sitting in front of her desk. He stares at her, high and mighty, perhaps literally high, looking at those eyes, and Geri wonders what she did to deserve this.

“You’re divorced, at least two years now, with no children and no pets. You like football and you have more nieces and nephews than you can easily remember. You keep meaning to buy new shoes but you never have the time.”

“Mister Know-it-all, then,” she says, raising her eyebrow. “How can we at the Met help you today?”

The young man leans forward, steepling his fingers under his chin. “You can listen while I tell you who murdered Hannah Sutherland.”

Geri leans back as the words wash over her. God help her, but he’s good. He’s actually, somehow, incredibly good at linking evidence to action, even when he’s only seen the scene from the outside--scratch that, he convinced the late Ms. Sutherland’s flatmates to let him in. Interesting, that. He’s got poorer people-skills than Toby. Perhaps he’s a good actor.

“You thinking of maybe joining the Met?” Geri asks after Sherlock Holmes dances his way through a series of logical leaps that still have her reeling. She’d called in a few members of the team to check out the leads young Mr. Holmes has detailed, and she can already tell that he is not going to play nice with her team. She’s going to have to make sure Sally’s never left alone with him.

The look he gives her...! Geri wants to applaud it. Haughtiness worthy of the Queen. “No, thank you, Lestrade.”

“Just a thought,” she murmurs, and holds out her hand. “Thank you, Sherlock.”

He hesitates, but goes to take her hand, and Geri closes hers around his and pulls him close. “But if I find you under the influence again, we won’t be having a nice little chat like today,” she says in her lowest, steeliest tone.

Sherlock’s eyes flash. “Understood.”

*********

Background check doesn’t reveal much. He’s young, well-educated, from a good family, has one brother--

“Mycroft,” Geri reads aloud, shakes her head, and wonders which of their parents had hated their children so very much. She takes another drag on her cigarette and sits back. Nothing to worry about. Just another private investigator pushing his way into crimes, and she can handle that. At least she’s not dealing with psychics, like Bradstreet.

She looks around her flat and sighs. Divorced at least two years. He’d called that pretty close. Geri doesn’t let herself think about Nick much. She misses him, still wears her wedding band, but that mostly because she doesn’t like appearing vulnerable, and people tend to think single women are.

Geri isn’t. Well, not usually. Not anymore than she was while married. She rubs the ring now with her thumb and stubs out her cigarette. Terrible to think that she’s going to die alone. More terrible still to think she’ll do so early, because she can’t fucking quit smoking.

“I need a hobby,” she says, her voice almost echoing in her bare flat.

*********

Motorbikes are not a hobby.

Motorbikes are a life.

And they’re a life that Geri, quite inexplicably, loves.

“You’ve lost it, haven’t you,” Sally says, laughing and yet still horrified, when Geri’s called in one day and shows up on the bike. “Oh no, you’ve got helmet hair.”

“Thinking of cutting it short,” Geri says, taking off her gloves so she can run her hand through it.

“It is short. Ma’am,” Sally remembers to add as they walk to the scene.

“Shorter, then.”

“Judi Dench?”

“How old do you think I am?” Geri waves off Sally’s answer and says, “Now, what’s going on here?”

It’s not the husband, three kids, and a dog she’d thought she’d have, ten years ago. But if she’d had that, she wouldn’t have a career, a bike, and a self-proclaimed sociopath texting her at 3 am for cold cases. Speaking of whom...

-Anything? SH

Geri wants there to be something, anything, for the kid to pit his mind against. She’s almost been banned from Toby’s list for taking over the impossible cases, racking up too many favours in the owed column, just so that Sherlock has something to do. Even when he annoys her, even when she wishes she could knock some sense into him with a fist, she likes him.

It’s probably menopause. She should probably be on hormones.

-Get clean, she texts back. It’s an argument they go through every couple of weeks, because he knows it’s her way of saying “I have nothing for you, so do something for me.” Also because he doesn’t like that she worries.

He already has an older brother, he’s told her. He already has someone monitoring him.

His someone isn’t monitoring him nearly enough, Geri thinks grouchily.

*********

Sherlock doesn’t knock; he uses the key he’d had copied one day while Geri was stuck at the office and didn’t notice he’d lifted it. But this is usual and even, dare she think it? somewhat nice. At least she knows he’s still alive.

“I’m clean,” he announces sulkily, and Geri hands him a mug as a reward.

They adjourn to breakfast. She hands him half an omelette and sits down to her half, deciding she’s pretty pleased with life. Sherlock eats, which means he wants something and is trying to get on Geri’s good side. “You should move,” she says.

“Really.” Ooh, she’s disappointed him; he puts the fork down and glares at her. Geri continues eating, carefully spearing a mushroom.

“Can’t be good, having all that around you,” she says, keeping it easy and conversational. “Get a new flat, somewhere... cleaner.”

Sherlock snorts. “Like where?”

“Who’s the genius, here? Do your own thinking.” Geri takes her plate to the sink and rinses it desultorily. Dishes. The price of good home cooking.

“I can’t afford anything... cleaner.” Sherlock mimics her pause with a sneer and hands her his plate--half a half an omelette still there. Geri shakes her head at it before she dumps it.

“Get a flatmate.”

“Are you looking?” Sherlock asks with poisonous sweetness.

Geri bursts into horrified laughter. “God, no!”

Sherlock straightens up, looking insulted, but it’s obvious insult which means he’s relieved. Geri sips her tea and sighs. “Everyone’s always advertising for flatmates. You’re bound to find someone.”

“No one who would want me as a flatmate.” He reaches for her cigarettes and pulls one out, then pockets the rest. Geri doesn’t stop him. She’s already wearing a patch.

I wouldn’t join any club that would have me as a member, Geri thinks, and smiles. “This is London, Sherlock. There must be someone out there who’ll fit you.”

*********

“Why don’t you dye it?” Sally asks. They’re at the pub. Geri invites Sally out as often as she can without being suspicious or creepy, because she’d like to keep her and Anderson from having too much opportunity to make fools of themselves.

“Because that would mean that I care,” Geri says, and takes another big drink.

Sally rolls her eyes. “That’s your excuse for not wearing makeup.”

“Yeah.”

“And for not wearing heels.”

“No, I don’t wear heels for morale,” Geri says, and points at Sally sternly. “It’s not good for the team if their boss is falling on her face every other step.”

Sally snorts and the subject is dropped, changed very nicely for football and the merits of watching it at the pub versus at home. Geri hopes her attitude is rubbing off on her Sergeant a little; Sally’s too good to limit herself to fitting the image of what the Met thinks an officer should be. They’re never imaginative enough.

Nor is she, it appears, because she never could have imagined being stopped in the street by a young woman who never once looks up from her phone, and being invited to take part in a discussion about Sherlock Holmes.

It gets Geri’s hackles up quick--a discussion, really?--and, perhaps because of the alcohol, she hops into the big black car with no hesitation. She’s ready for a discussion about Sherlock Holmes with anyone who wants to discuss him.

She’s very glad she’s wearing her big boots.

*********

“Ah, Inspector, please have a seat.”

Geri isn’t drunk. Oh, she isn’t entirely sober, but she’s not drunk. She’s not hallucinating this. She is in a mostly empty warehouse, standing on the deserted floor, staring at a man (white, mid to late thirties, two meters height at least) in a three piece suit who is gesturing to a single empty wooden chair with a bloody umbrella.

This may have been a bad idea.

“Who are you?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

“All in good time, Inspector,” the man says, and smiles in a blank, controlled, entirely insincere manner. “I’d like to ask you a few questions. Please, sit?”

“Aren’t you going to offer me a cigarette?” Geri asks. “And I’m fine standing.”

“As you wish.” The man’s expression becomes very serious and, in some manner Geri can’t quite define, vaguely threatening. “What is your relationship with Sherlock Holmes?”

“My what?” she says blankly.

“Your relationship,” the man says again, sighing just loudly enough to make Geri bristle. “Why and in what manner do you associate with him?”

“What do you care?” Geri demands, arms falling to her sides. “Who are you?”

“Please don’t make this difficult, Inspector,” the man says, lifting his umbrella to examine its point. Geri is going to feed him that umbrella in a minute. “I do so dislike it when things are difficult. I’m sure you feel the same, as close to promotion as you are.”

Geri doesn’t say what again, but it’s a close thing. “Are you threatening me?”

“Why would I threaten you?” the man asks, and Geri throws her arms in the air.

“I don’t know! I don’t even know who you are! Which you know, because you keep not answering when I ask who you are!” She glares at him, crossing her arms again, daring him to ignore that.

“Geraldine Lestrade, Detective Inspector with the Met for four years, although you should have been promoted much earlier, twenty years altogether on the job,” the man says evenly, expression unchanging. “Previously married to Nicholas Wright, now working in a high-level position with a small insurance company out of--”

“I didn’t ask you who I am,” Geri interrupts furiously, taking two steps forward. The slight, amused smirk on the man’s face stops her. “I know who I am. Who are you?”

“I am someone who is very concerned with the welfare of Sherlock Holmes.”

“So do I call you Mister Concerned?” Geri asks with false brightness.

The man blinks once or twice, and the smirk gets broader. “Perhaps we should talk another time.”

“No, let’s talk now. Really! Because last I heard, Sherlock was doing well. Getting out of his rathole flat, getting a new one. Does he owe you money? I’ll kill him. He’s got friends with the Met, Mister Concerned. At least one.” She’s babbling. She’s babbling with rage. She’s going to remember this in the morning and cringe so hard she sprains something.

The man is laughing at her. “Very good, Inspector Lestrade.”

“That’s Detective Inspector to you!”

“My apologies.”

Geri is fuming, embarrassed, and ready to kick the chair over, but some part of her brain is still working because the next thing out of her mouth is, “I should hope so, Mycroft Holmes.”

And Mycroft Holmes becomes very still, except for tilting his head and staring at her like she’s the most interesting thing in the room--well, considering they are in a deserted warehouse, she likely is.

“I see why my brother is interested in you,” he says slowly.

This is, Geri thinks, a very bad time to realise she has to go to the loo.

*********

They do insist on putting her on the spot. Geri thinks it’s because she’s incurably awkward, and her bosses are all sadistic.

“Don’t commit suicide?” Sally hisses at her after the press conference.

“No one’s going to remember that after Sherlock’s little texting trick,” Geri snaps.

“Don’t count on it--ma’am,” Sally says, breaking away as Geri stomps into her office.

Of course, things just get worse, especially when she has to call Sherlock in--her team is never, ever, ever going to forgive her. She has to promise three weeks of no Sherlock (negotiated down from never again) after he reveals Anderson’s and Sally’s affair to everyone on the street.

And while it helps that she sets up the drugs bust and lets them all join in, that’s ruined when she can’t help but rein it in upon realising, god help him, that Sherlock likes his new flatmate and wants to make a good impression on him and the flatmate has no bloody idea about the drugs, none at all.

But he does, apparently, carry an unlicensed firearm.

Geri is trying very hard to forget that as Sherlock walks away to join him.

“Come on, let’s get this wrapped up,” she says, feeling oddly cheerful, thinking about Sherlock having a friend in John Watson. She watches the emergency vehicles pull away, taking the body to the morgue, and thinks about Sherlock’s initial statement: playing a little game for kicks, taking other people’s lives, because his could be gone at any moment.

She’s more grateful than she can say for John Watson, for more reasons than she can say.

“Detective Inspector?”

Oh Christ. Geri turns, lifting her chin and trying hard not to cross her arms defensively. “Mr. Holmes?”

Mycroft Holmes is smiling, not the infuriatingly polite smile, but a genuinely relieved and even a bit happy one. He’s holding out his hand for hers. “Thank goodness for Dr. Watson, hm?”

Geri smiles in spite of herself, and shakes his hand.

*********

fin

**Author's Note:**

> I was not going to go with "Gregoria."
> 
> Never ever beta-ed or Brit-picked. I don't work well with others. :|


End file.
